


Not A Common Fairytale

by lisachan



Series: Leoverse [109]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 12:56:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6117127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For as long as he can remember, Leo has always lived alone in the woods.<br/>The problem is he can't remember much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not A Common Fairytale

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
>  This is also part of a doomed timeline, which would be one of those AU/What Ifs in which Leo and Blaine have been together, if only briefly, but ultimately end up apart, or didn't get together at all.  
> Hello folks! This is an entirely new installment of the Leoverse! Yay! They pop up like mushrooms comes fall, seriously, we know that. We tried to avoid it as much as possible. (That is obviously a lie.)  
> In this universe, the starting situation is a bit complicated, but you'll find out. I don't wanna spoiler anything -- the whole point of this story is to find out the truth about Leo and what he's forgotten, and why. So I won't keep you any longer. Enjoy! :)

**The Eyes**

He can’t remember the first time he saw those baby blue eyes watching him from the bushes outside the house. If he tries very very hard, he can go back at least a few years, which is already a lot, but he’s almost sure he must’ve started way before that first moment he can remember, because even then he already had a feeling he had lived with it for before he actually knew. 

It’s weird how you can get used to the strangest things. The presence outside the window has always been something real, existing in his life, as for other people might’ve been working every day, or merchants passing by to sell them food and goods. He always feels a little uncomfortable when he thinks about it, when he sees a blue flash appear between the bushes and disappear right away, but that feeling only really hits him when he remembers to check. He usually goes about his day carelessly, getting out of the house, walking to the closest village’s well to get water, then coming back, even venturing into the forest for some wood and food when he needs it, and when he’s busy with something he doesn’t think about the presence, he’s not bothered by it.

Some other days, though, especially when there’s nothing to do, when he’s got food put aside and wood stored away in the backyard, and he’s got nowhere to go and no one to talk to, those days the forest seems alive with blue eyes, they seem to be everywhere.

And this is, apparently, one of those days.

**The Past**

Since he can remember, he’s always lived alone in the house. There were parents, up to some point, he remembers that. Also, the guys at the village, his friends, repeatedly told him over the years it was impossible for parents not to exist when there was a child. He must’ve been born from someone – that much now Leo knows too, he’s old enough for that, but he doesn’t remember their faces. He remembers the sound of someone’s voice, a young man telling him “it’s alright, baby boy, you stay here, we’re going to be gone for just a few hours, we’ll be back before dawn”. 

They were never back, though, whoever they were.

Leo’s learned how to live with that. He doesn’t remember the first few years, how it was to live alone out here in the woods. He went to the village and people started to know him, asked about him, and when they learned where he lived and how they all did their best to help, the village’s doctor, the friends he made there – the kids he played with, their parents, the teacher at the local school. They were very kind to him, and he appreciated all their efforts to make his life more comfortable, but he didn’t feel bad living alone at the house. He guesses the first few years he just wanted to stay there, just in case his parents might come back, but after a while he simply got used to that, to the silence, the empty spaces, to stare into the deep of the forest with no fear despite the loneliness. He found his dimension in it, he’s learned how to handle himself on his own.

Handling other people is harder, which is why the blue eyes make him so uncomfortable.

He knows it’s a person, he’s seen glimpses of him, especially in the last few days, since his visits have become more frequent. He’s short and he looks young, more or less his age if not younger. He’s thin and everything about him is tiny. Leo found his footprints in the mud, one day, after a pretty bad storm, and they looked like they had been left by the feet of a kid. 

He’s not scared about him precisely, he’s just upset by the weirdness of his presence, and by the way he gravitates around the house without really ever coming close to it, or knocking at the door. If he really wants to watch Leo so much, how come he doesn’t wanna talk to him? How come he doesn’t wanna meet him? And why is he coming around so often, now, after spending all these years risking to make his presence known only every now and then?

**The Outside**

Leo has tried not to obsess about this. He knows everything coming from the forest is a potential danger, and nothing except his small build indicates the boy could be different. He knows he shouldn’t confront him, that maybe he should ask the villagers for help, and find a way to chase him away once and for all, but he’s not a wild beast, he’s a person, someone watching him, someone who’s been watching him for years, now, and maybe it’s true that Leo got used to it, started thinking about it as something normal, something obvious like the run rising and setting every day, but maybe he shouldn’t have. Maybe, instead of staring back to those blue eyes, he should’ve come out and questioned their owner.

He decides it’s time. 

He doesn’t have weapons, except his axe and a little knife he uses for pretty much everything he can’t use the axe for. He hooks the knife in the back of his belt and decides to leave the axe home – he doesn’t want to make him feel threatened. He doesn’t wanna scare him, he just wants to understand.

He comes out of the house and watches the forest from the clearing facing it. Everything seems silent, but he can see him. There are his eyes, ever attentive, ever watchful. He swallows, moving a step towards him.

“I think you should come out,” he says, and the moment he speaks he sees something change in the stranger’s eyes. They widen up, filling with fear, and then there’s something else, something Leo can detect but not define, a feeling of loss, of grief, something that connects with him because he’s felt it too, every now and then, thinking about all the years he can’t remember, and the faces of his parents that got lost with them. He moves another step towards the boy, speaking again, and he doesn’t notice, but his voice has grown softer. “Who are you…?”

The boy doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t run away either. He’s squatting behind the bushes, hiding. Leo can only see his eyes and a glimpse of the rest of his body. He’s wearing furs. He must’ve lived out here for a very long time.

“Can you understand me?” he asks softly. The boy nods. “Can you speak?” He nods again. “Will you speak to me?”

This time, the boy shakes his head. Leo sees his hair whirl in the motion. They’re long and there are strings tying some locks in braids, to keep them out of his face. 

“Can you come out here?” he asks, fascinated with him, “I wanna see you.”

The boy seems to think about it for a moment that seems not to ever end. Then he stands up. He’s very short, but still, he’s all legs. The short dress he’s wearing, entirely made out of fur and kept closed and tight around his waist with a raw leather belt tied on his hip, does nothing to hide them – or the scratches and tiny white scars scattered around the rest of his body, especially his arms.

It’s in his eyes, though, that Leo keeps getting lost. They’re the strangest shade of blue Leo has ever seen. He’s got blue eyes too, but they look nothing like the boy’s. There’s something making them different, something that makes it impossible for him to look away.

He forgets every idea he had of how this conversation should’ve gone. He moves closer – one step, then another. The boy tenses but doesn’t run. Don’t run, don’t run, Leo thinks, covering the distance between them.

He raises an arm. The boy stares at it with careful eyes. Leo thinks he looks like a tiny beast from the forest, a young fox, perhaps, or a squirrel. Curious, but wary. He’s scared he’ll run away the moment Leo tries to touch him, but he doesn’t, and Leo manages to stroke his cheek. Despite the little scratches, his skin is soft. Leo looks down, at the boy’s lips. They seem soft too.

“Who are you…?” he whispers again, at a loss of words, of reasons to step back. 

He leans in without thinking about it. All he wants is to get closer. And closer, and closer. But that’s probably too close – the boy backs away. In the blink of an eye, he disappears in the deep of the forest. Leo’s left alone in the clearing, an unexplainable pang to his stomach, the dreadful feeling of unfulfilled need making him tense all over. He can’t see him anymore, and yet seeing him again is the only thing he wants right now.

**The Disappearance**

Something’s bothering him, and he cannot understand what it is. The only thing he knows is that it started the moment he touched the boy’s face, and it hasn’t left him ever since. There was some sort of electricity coursing through them in that moment, something passed from him to himself, something changed him on a deeper level, a level Leo can’t understand yet, because he can’t identify it. 

He’s started thinking back. Not only the last few years, but before them. Those eyes following him everywhere. Flashing from the deep green of the forest. But there are flashes in his memories, flashes from before he’s aware of remembering anything. Eyes so similar to those, perhaps the very same?, and they looked so close. Eyes staring into one another. Voice whispering in the dark of a tiny room with wooden walls just like those of his house, one of the voices his own, the other completely unknown. If they see us. We should not. It is bad. Please don’t stop. 

He tries not to think about it, it just confuses him. Those words don’t ring like something real, like something he can connect to his life. He’s always been alone. He’s never felt like this. He wishes the boy would come back, so he could ask about it, and maybe he’d answer, or maybe he wouldn’t, but at least Leo would be able to stare into those eyes of his, to try and dig for an answer in the deep of their blue.

But he’s been gone since he disappeared inside the forest, and Leo can only keep watching outside the window, hoping he’ll see the flash of his eyes again as he tries to control what’s happening inside his mind, and each day it passes, instead of getting easier, it only gets even harder.

**The Missing**

Days pass by one after the other, there’s no telling them apart ‘cause there’s nothing telling them apart. They’re all alike, and the stranger’s eyes have disappeared from sight completely.

Leo’s mind is a mess. He feels as if it was a box filled with too many things to contain them all. The voices have returned. His own is clearer, now. Yes but I. But I really want to. But I love you, Cody.

He doesn’t know who Cody is. At this point, he’s not even sure who he himself is anymore. He’s always lived alone in the forest. He’s always lived alone in this house. Except for those eyes, those eyes watching him from the woods, those eyes watching him from up close, where were they when they were so close to each other Leo could see himself reflected in those eyes, when was it?

One day, then two, then three, then it’s ten, and Leo doesn’t know what’s happening. Years of watching, just to disappear like that. He needs him back, he needs answers. He needs to touch him again, see if that touch will spark some new memories, something clearer about Cody, about the voice, about that tiny wooden room in a place that Leo knows in his heart not to be the house where he lives now.

And then the voice of his parents. We’ll be back before dawn. We’ll be gone for but a few hours. We need to find him. But to find who?

And then one day – the fifteenth? The twentieth? It’s hard to keep count when they all look alike – Leo looks outside the window, and the boy’s there, and he’s crying. He’s not hiding behind the bushes, he’s not trying to keep himself from being seen. He’s out there, in the open, big tears rolling down his cheeks, his eyes so red, as if he’d been crying incessantly since the day he went away.

Time starts flowing again. This day is different than all those that have come before it.

Leo stands up from the chair and runs outside.

**The Cry**

He can’t explain what’s happening, he only knows it feels right, and it’s scary, because it shouldn’t.

In the deafening silence holding them hostages, the tiny sobs escaping from the boy’s lips are loud like thunders, and Leo can hear them resonate with the beat of his heart, restless, fast and anxious. He walks closer to him, his eyes focused on his features, on his shaky frame. He looks so tiny, so much tinier than the last time he’s seen him. He realizes he missed him, and the mere thought scares the life out of him. He doesn’t know who this boy is, what’s his name, how he’s connected to him. He lived with the implicit knowledge of his existence every day of his life, and he’s always found it dreadful, and yet the moment he was deprived of it he felt lost and needy, as if part of his heart had walked away from him, leaving him incomplete.

“I don’t know who you are and you terrify me,” he whispers, stopping right in front of him. The boy cries louder, covering his face with both his hands, his shoulders shaking hard with each and every sob. Leo’s heart cracks a little, and he puts his hands on the boy’s head, bringing him closer, kissing him on his forehead. “Please, don’t cry,” he begs him with a broken voice, “I don’t know why but I can’t listen to this. Please, stop.”

The boy only seems to be able to cry harder. He sounds like there was no bottom to the pit of sadness he’s descending into. Everything Leo wants is to find the right rope to throw him, to help him come out there.

“Please…” he says again, kissing him on his cheek, tasting the salt of his tears on the tip of his tongue, praying, begging that he doesn’t decide to run away, “Please, stop crying,” one more kiss on the corner of his mouth, his stomach twisting and somersaulting when he feels his lips respond, searching for more, “Please, I can’t stand to see you like this,” one last kiss where his lips taste sweeter, are they supposed to?, living out here, how can he taste so sweet?, and yet he does, and he feels heavenly, the softness of his skin, how silky his hair are as Leo runs his fingers through his straight pitch black locks, and his chocolate flavored warmth, the wetness of his tongue, the way he used to touch him at night, how they moved together on the bed, we should not, how white his skin looked under the moonlight, Leo, it’s forbidden, and how Leo touched him all over, his hand diving between his thighs, you feel so soft here, Leo, we cannot, but I like you so much, Leo, we cannot, but you taste like paradise, Leo, we cannot, but you feel like I was born to bury my soul in the depth of your body, but Leo, we cannot, but Cody, I love you.

He backs off abruptly, staring at him with his eyes open wide. The boy’s looking back, frightened, confused, traces of tears down his cheeks, his chest heaving, his lips cherry red and swollen with kisses. Horrified, Leo looks at him. He doesn’t know who he is, but that name, Cody, Cody, keeps ringing in his ears, and his voice, I love you, it seems so distant, it doesn’t feel like himself, and the horror, this dreadful feeling of guilt, of pain, of being disgusted with himself.

He steps back, uncertainly. The boy starts crying again, raising one hand towards him. “No…” he whispers. His voice sounds so sweet.

Leo still turns around and runs back into the house, locking the door, shutting the curtains closed.

**The Inside**

Twenty-four hours later, he still hasn’t come out of hiding. 

It’s been one hell of a night, the boy wouldn’t leave him alone. He kept emerging from his memories, he kept seeing him in his dreams. Flashes of him, glimpses of him, a smile, his eyes, the blush of his cheeks, never the full picture, never the scratched boy in fur he met a few weeks ago, but someone else, someone Leo maybe knew before, someone he doesn’t remember knowing at all. He feels as though someone had poured someone else’s memories inside his head, and they’re cluttering the room, making it impossible for him to think straight, paralyzing him. 

Leo feels as if he was running from something, a monster he cannot see, cannot face. He doesn’t know why he’s running, he only knows he has to. That the only way he’s got to keep his sanity is to run, run and never look back, not even when he hears his voice calling, Leo, Leo, not even when he hears the echo of his sobs vibrating in the air all around him.

It’s almost night when he sees his hand pressed against the window. He sees its black outline through the curtain, hears the glass creak discretely under the pressure. “Are you gonna let me in?” the boy asks. Leo doesn’t answer. “Are you gonna come out?” he asks again. Once more, Leo chooses silence. “You’re gonna leave me here alone,” the boy says after a while, “Just like I did. Right?”

Leo brings his hands to his face, covering it, shaking his head. Leave me alone, leave me alone, I want to forget, I want to forget all about it, all about the past, about you, whoever you are, just leave me be, I don’t want to see you again.

Silently, he waits. Silently, after a while, the boy disappears.

**The Scratch**

The room is tiny and the temperature’s so hot Leo thinks he might suffocate. Cody’s lying beside him, the warmth of his body radiating all around him, wrapping him up like a soft blanket. The smell of his skin, of his hair, is intoxicating. Leo thinks about this morning, as he watched him wash himself in the river, naked and glorious, his skin glistening in the sunlight. How he wanted him. And he had to hold back.

But now he doesn’t have to. He moves towards him, slides against his body. Leo, no, Cody whispers, but he’s shivering. Leo’s touching him, and it feels amazing. He’s soft and warm all over and Leo wants to taste him, wants to take a bite. No, wait, Cody says, but he moans and he feels mellow, he parts his legs when Leo touches him underneath his clothes, he whimpers, welcomes him inside when Leo’s fingers press against his opening and then past it. Leo, stop, Cody whines, but Cody wants it, and Leo wants it too, and he moves closer, closer, and he kisses him, and Cody melts against him, yes, yes, please, now you want it, right?, yes, I do, now you like it, right?, yes, Leo, yes, part your legs for me, love, and Leo opens his eyes wide, his heart beating so fast it’s making him deaf to any other sound, and he wakes up feeling pain all over his body, as if someone had beaten him half to death while he was asleep.

He sits up straight, looking out the window. The night is still dark and he can’t stand this situation anymore. His head is pounding painfully but that’s not the reason he can’t go on with this one single minute more in his life.

He stands up, runs outside, half naked and messed up as he is. The boy’s there, watching. When he sees him, he jumps up and backs off. Leo looks at him and he can see Cody in him, he can recognize his features, he knows he was something, someone, but his mind locks up whenever he thinks he’s getting to the answer to all his questions, and he needs those answers, now, he can’t go on like this anymore.

He walks towards him, grabs him by his arm. “Tell me who you are.”

The boy glares at him, trying to pull back. “No,” he says resolutely, “Let me go.”

Leo squeezes his arm harder, he doesn’t care if he hurts him. “Tell me who you are!” he shouts, “Tell me what you want from me! Who’s the boy from my dream, where are my parents, why do I feel like this, why won’t you leave me be?!”, and he shakes him, and pushes him, and presses him against the trunk of a tree, the thudding sound, the alarmed chirping of the scared birds leaping from the branches, flying away, and then the fire burning in the boy’s eyes, his low growl, his nails against his chest, the scratch, the blood, his voice like a thunder LET – ME – GO.

Leo backs off, the sharp pain of the wound making his blood boil. The boy takes advantage of it – turns around, runs away.

Leo could go back inside, tend to his wound, try – once again – and forget all about this.

Instead, he follows.

**The Run**

He’s never been so deep in the woods. He’s got no landmarks, everywhere around him it’s just trees, trees and grass, but right in front of him the boy is still running, and he’s the only landmark he can follow for the moment.

His mind is crowded with painful thoughts, Cody, his smile, and then the boy, and how they look alike, and his brain can’t follow, he can’t connect the dots, he feels as though he was looking at an already solved enigma and still he couldn’t quite figure out how he got to the solution.

“Stop!” he yells, not as loud as he’d like to because his breath keeps breaking, keeps making it impossible for him to speak. Stop, he’d like to say, stop and let me look at you, stop because I want to see your eyes, stop because I think the answer I’m searching for is hidden at the bottom of them, stop and explain to me, who are you, why does seeing you hurt me so, what’s linking us, why can’t I stop thinking about it, can’t you see it in my eyes, can’t you see that I need it, why don’t you stop?

The boy’s running more slowly, now. They’re closer, and Leo hears his crying. He needs to take the chance. He needs to try. He jumps.

**The Ground**

He lands on top of him, and the boy growls when they hit the ground. They’re close to a river, Leo can hear the water flow, ring as it swirls and jumps over the bedrock at the bottom. There’s no grass, here, and they scratched themselves during the fall.

Leo props himself up on his hands and knees, trying to make him turn around. The boy feels his weight off himself and instantly tries to slither away, clawing at the dirt, but Leo grabs him. “No!” he screams, holding him by his shoulders, forcing him to turn, to lie down on his back.

That’s when he sees he’s crying. He’s crying hard, sobbing, and there’s such desperation in his eyes Leo can’t even understand what’s going on anymore. “Why are you crying like this?!” he asks nervously, realizing he sounds as if he was on the verge of breaking in tears too.

“Because this is wrong,” the boy sobs, closing his eyes, covering his face, “It’s wrong and it was all for nothing. And it’s all my fault.”

“Stop!” Leo yells again, shaking him hard, trying to make him lower his arms, “Why do you talk to me like this? What are you trying to tell me? I can’t understand if you don’t explain, tell me who you are!”

The boy finally looks back at him, tears streaming down his face, his chest moving up and down with every sob. He reaches out, stroking his cheek. Leo shivers wildly the moment the boy’s fingers touch him. Suddenly he’s in the tiny wooden-walled room, and it’s hot again, and Cody’s so close, and all he wants is to hold him tight, to inhale his scent and slide inside him like a sheathed sword. “Leo,” the boy calls him, Cody’s voice, Cody’s face, despite not knowing who Cody is, “Leo, what are you doing?”

He swallows hard, an abyss of fear gaping inside him. “I have no idea,” he says.

Then he leans in, and kisses him.

**The Kiss**

It’s rough and needy and angry and deep, it’s hot and fierce as it used to, he kisses him as if he needed to defeat him, to submit him, and the boy tries to pull back, _Cody_ tries to pull back, like he always used to do, they’ll see us, Leo, they’ll hear us, they’ll know, and though he doesn’t speak, now, because there’s no one who could see them, no one who’s listening, he keeps trying to get away from the kiss, he’s still trying to push him away, and Leo just doesn’t want him to go.

And everything seems to come back all at once, even though it’s messy, even though it’s confused, and the memories wash in seamlessly, they don’t have outlines, they can’t be told apart one from the other. There was a thousand kisses stored in his mind, a thousand nights of love and guilt he can’t understand the reason for, a thousand early wake ups in the morning to watch him sleep, a thousand thousand-hours walks to follow him everywhere, wherever he went, just to never tear his eyes off him. 

He remembers him before he knows who he is. He remembers talking for hours in an empty house. Eating together, going out on stupid quests to feed the frogs in the river, he remembers stripping naked and taking a bath in the pond under the waterfall, they called it Springwell because they could see the crack in the mountain from which the water came out, and Cody liked to stay there for hours, just floating under the raining water, and Leo remembers how carefully he watched him all the time, scared he could hurt himself or drown some stupid way, and he remembers his smile, and how good his lips tasted, and pushing him against the rock wall behind the waterfall, where he could kiss him and touch him without fear, the only place in which Cody never said no, the only place in which he was lenient right from the start.

Leo kisses him deeper, think about the waterfall, he silently pleads, think about that, please don’t make me stop, and the boy slowly surrenders, his hands stop pushing, they start touching stroking holding, and suddenly they’re wrapped around Leo’s neck, holding him, and he feels so soft and comforting, even though the idea that his body knows him more than he does scares him and confuses him.

It’s over too soon.

**The Name**

He looks at him silently. He’s breathless, and the boy is too.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” he asks as the boy looks at him, big tears forming in his eyes once again, “You’re him. The boy from my dreams— from my memories. They’re memories, aren’t they? You’re Cody.”

The boy closes his eyes. His tears roll down his cheeks, leaving wet traces in their wake. Leo answers to a primal urge as he leans in to kiss them away, and the boy starts sobbing.

“Don’t,” he whispers with a shaky breath. Leo just kisses him again in response, and the boy shivers. “You’ll hate me.”

Leo exhales, pressing his forehead against Cody’s, his eyes closed. He breathes in his scent. It’s feral and sweet, like wild strawberries. It feels like home and family so much more than anything else he’s smelled in his life – more than wood, more than food, more than the air of the village and the scent of the trees. “There’s so much love in me with your name marked upon,” he breathes against his lips, resisting the urge to kiss him again, “And I don’t even know who you are. I don’t think I could ever hate you.”

“That’s only because you don’t know,” Cody sobs again, raising his arms to hug him again.

Leo keeps silent for a few seconds, taking in his warmth. “I still wanna know,” he says then.

Cody nods slowly, pressing his nose against his cheek. “I’ll tell you,” he says, “I’ll tell you everything. Just give me a few hours. Give me until dawn. Let’s… let’s just stay like this until dawn, and then I’ll tell you.”

**The Beginning**

In the pale light of the morning Cody looks even more beautiful, exactly like Leo remembers him. Not even the scratches and scars on his skin are enough to taint the perfect picture of his face, not even the messy hair covering half of it. Leo watches him, studying his features to memorize him again. The pictures converge in his mind, they overlap. They’re the same person again.

“I was your brother,” he says softly looking back at him as the first beams of sunlight make his eyes shimmer and shine, “I guess, despite everything, even now I still am. There’s no blood link between us, our parents found me and then you during their wanderings. You remember nothing of them, I know.”

“I remember a face,” Leo says, “A sweet voice.”

Cody smiles sadly, stroking his cheek. “You weren’t supposed to, but I’m glad you do. I guess that’s my fault too, but I can live with it. They were called David and Kurt, they were street artists, they were singers. They roamed the country putting up shows for money. It was hard for them to leave us home alone, but they had to, and the villagers helped.”

“The villagers knew?”

“They don’t know now,” Cody shakes his head, speaking soothingly, “They forgot like you forgot.”

“How is that possible?”

“I’ll come to that.”

Leo nods slowly, letting it sink. “I loved you, didn’t I?”

“You did, and I loved you,” Cody answers right away, “Even though we shouldn’t have, we loved each other. We had grown up together in an empty house since the day I turned ten. I took care of you, we did everything together, we ate together, played together, washed together, slept together. The night you turned twelve you were sad, we were alone and I didn’t know what to do. I asked you what would you like to have as a birthday present. You asked for a kiss. That was the first time our lips ever touched, but from that day on you started to look at me differently. I tried to avoid it, I hid away most of the time, but you kept following. I thought about you every night, and I felt dirty and disgusting, and every time you hugged me and asked me if there was something you could do for me, but I couldn’t answer, and so you waited. When you turned thirteen, you kissed me again. I tried to stop you, but I couldn’t – I didn’t want to. It started then.”

Leo hides his face against the curve of his shoulder, forcing down a sob that threatens to shake him hard enough to break him. “I can’t remember.”

“I know,” Cody says, wrapping him up in a comforting hug, “It’ll come. At this point, it’ll come.”

Leo concentrates on his scent, on the intensity of it. He remembers it sticking to the sheets, to his body. He remembers smelling his fingers in the morning and finding it there. Why is it only the small things? Why can’t he remember the big picture? 

What is he so terrified of?

**The In-between**

“Why can’t I remember?” he asks, still hiding out against him. He feels like a safe place enough. He wonders if it was the same back then, when they were children. Was Cody his safe place, then? Is this why he wanted to hide inside him?

“I did something,” Cody says, stroking his hair, “It’s my fault you can’t remember. Magic made it possible.”

“Magic doesn’t exist.”

“It does,” Cody insists calmly, “Spells don’t exist, illusions are just tricks, but magic exists, and it’s a powerful force. I abused of it. I made this happen to you. It was all my fault.”

“I can’t believe it,” Leo says, shaking his head, “This is absurd, it makes no sense. Magic isn’t a thing and it can’t make you forget about people. I couldn’t have forgotten you,” he almost cries, “I loved you so much.”

“Some things are stronger than love,” Cody explains, giving in to a bitter smile, “Fear, and pain, and horror, and grief. The fairy king used this, all these feelings we had inside. He turned them to magic and used them against you, against the villagers, making you forget.”

“You make no sense,” Leo sobs, tears streaming down his face, dripping down on Cody’s skin, flowing down his shoulder, “Now you speak of fairy kings. Fairies don’t exist, like magic.”

“They exist, and I’m half one,” Cody says, kissing his tears away, “I’ve been turned into one the night I ran away.”

**The End**

“Why did you do it?” Leo asks in the lowest of voices, holding onto him with the desperation of a man lost at sea, “Why did you run?”

Cody breathes in, closing his eyes. Speaking hurts him, cuts him underneath his skin. There’s invisible blood running all over his body, he’s drenched in it, Leo can feel it even though he can’t see it. Cody’s been cutting himself for years, he’s been bleeding for years. Leo wonders how he can even be still alive. How does a person survive to such limitless pain?

“One night our parents came home,” he says, “We weren’t expecting them. You liked to have me outside of the bedroom when they weren’t around. You liked to play grown up, you pretended the house was ours and only ours, that we were husbands, that we didn’t have anything to be ashamed of. They found us bent over the kitchen table. They saw everything. They were disgusted, horrified. You can’t, they said, it’s forbidden. As if we didn’t know. They blamed you, of course. After all, you were the one on top. How could you do this to your brother, they said. You were so confused, and I was crying so much. I couldn’t find the words, I kept saying please, please, I didn’t even know what I was begging for, perhaps for time to turn back, for another chance to make things right. There was no magic in me then, I couldn’t do anything. They threatened to separate us if we didn’t swear we’d stop. You told them you loved me, and dad slapped you. I couldn’t stand it. I knew it was my fault, ‘cause I was the one who should’ve stopped you long before, and I was the one who had accepted to give you that first kiss, even though I shouldn’t have. I ran away. Disappeared in the woods. After a few hours, they came searching for me. They didn’t know I had found the King in the meantime. That’s how fairies work, they feel when you need them, they feel it when they know you’re desperate enough you’d pay them back with whatever they’d ask from you. He knew I’d comply, and he showed himself to me. I asked him to save you from me, to keep me away from you, so you would stop loving me, and you could have lived happily with our parents. He told me he could do that, but I had to become one of them, and from that day on I’d be their hunter, I’d have hunted for the court. Every day since then I’ve been killing beasts and people passing through the woods, to feed them. But that’s a different story. That night they came searching for me, and they found me. The King was working his magic on me, changing me into a fairy, but they came in between the ritual, threw themselves at him to stop him. They managed, but the King, beyond himself with rage, turned against them. He killed them, and devoured them in front of me.” He stops for a moment, his voice finally breaks. “And you.”

Leo holds his breath, flashes and glimpses dancing in front of his eyes. “I was supposed to stay home,” he murmurs confusedly, “I was supposed to wait for them.”

Cody nods slowly. “Instead, you followed them. You were worried for me, for them too, all alone in the woods, they didn’t know them well as we did. And you saw the whole thing. And when I saw you come out of the bushes your eyes were empty, your expression blank, but you were crying so much, and I knew…” he sobs, covering his eyes with one hand, “I knew there was nothing I could do for you. So I begged the Fairy King to take it all away, your horror, your pain, he told me he had to take your memories for that, and I said he could, and so he did. He wiped me away from you, everything about us, about our parents too. He made the villagers forget and built you another house in the woods, the one where you live now. He warned me, though. That now I was magic too, and if I came too close I could’ve awakened those memories inside you again. I knew the risks, and I still did it.”

Leo finally raises his head again, looking at him. “Why did you do it, then?” he asks in a shaky voice. 

Cody keeps crying, but he’s smiling a resigned smile that makes him the most beautiful being Leo has ever seen. “Because I couldn’t stay away.”

**The Portrait**

He shows him a picture, ‘cause he still can’t believe. It’s an old drawing, a portrait, he hides it in a hidden fold of his dress. It’s the only thing the Fairy King let him keep. 

It’s a picture of their parents. They’re young and they’re handsome, they smile sweetly like everyone does in every picture. Their eyes are kind, and upon seeing him Leo feels as though something had been liberated inside him. Suddenly he remembers things he couldn’t remember before. The house at the village, how happy they were when their parents came back, how dreadful it felt whenever they went away. Every single shared meal, the trips to the river, fishing with dad, practicing singing with daddy. He remembers being together as a family, remembers being with Cody – Cody, his brother, the person he loved most in the world, the person he wanted most, above everything else. He doesn’t know if it’s the picture triggering him or Cody’s magic, he doesn’t know if anything he’s saying is true, but it feels like it, it feels true like something searched for long and finally unlocked.

Most of all, he remembers happiness. The brightness of it. A feeling that’s not a feeling, a feeling that’s something physical, something warm and shiny like the sunlight.

He remembers that most of all.

Slowly, he starts crying.

**The Tears**

“Please, don’t,” Cody says in between kisses, holding him close to his heart, “Please, don’t cry. I didn’t wanna hurt you.”

Leo wishes he could find the words to tell him. That it’s true, he’s hurt him, but it’s as if he had cut his flesh to free him from invisible chains. It hurts, but it was worth it. And Leo kisses him back, and as he cries, years of sadness and loneliness and inability to understand flowing out of him with each and every tear, he smiles, and he laughs, and he presses sweet wet kisses along the curved line of Cody’s neck, whispering thank you, thank you, brother, thank you, my love, thank you, Cody, for sacrificing yourself, for giving me years of bliss, for giving me back to myself when bliss turned to sadness. Thank you for taking me apart, and thank you for making me whole again.

Cody sobs together with him. “You remember me, now, don’t you?” he asks in a whisper.

“It’s not that I remember you,” Leo answers, kissing him on his lips, “It’s that I’ve found you again.”

**The Memory**

“We used to swim together, didn’t we? We used to sleep together and we used to hug first thing in the morning, before we even got out of bed. We used to kiss our dads goodbye when they were home, and we used to run out into the forest. We used to play for hours, chasing squirrels, howling at the wolves, climbing the trees whenever they howled back at us. We used to laugh and eat mushrooms we found on the ground, I always picked the poisonous ones, you had to stop me, you saved my life so many times, but you didn’t know, I did it on purpose, I wanted you to save me ‘cause the thought felt nice. We used to stay out all day long, we used to share everything. We hid under beds of dead leaves and I used to look into your eyes and tell you I’d marry you. You used to cry, but you smiled so much. I used to make you happy, brother mine, didn’t I? We used to love each other, brother mine, didn’t we?” 

**The Pleasure**

He takes him as he used to take him when Cody was sad and needed to be comforted more than he needed to feel pleasure. He holds him gently between his arms and kisses him on every inch of his skin. He undoes the leather belt and frees him from his furs, he uncovers white scarred skin underneath and he kisses each and every mark, making him shiver. He takes him in his mouth and Cody moans his name, that’s music, that’s magic, he’s wrong when he says there are forces stronger than love, because it’s love that made this miracle possible. Fear and pain and horror and grief were enough to take away his memories, but not to destroy them, but love gave them back to him more splendid than before.

He keeps holding him in his arms as he settles between his thighs. He pushes slowly inside him, Cody welcomes him as if he had waited for that and only that for the past five years. He whispers his name, he whispers he’s sorry. Leo kisses him just to silence him, he doesn’t wanna hear him say he’s sorry for having come back, for having been week enough not to keep away from him. His brother’s weakness is the only thing that brought him back, and Leo’s grateful for it.

Pleasure swells in his underbelly and he follows the waves as he moves inside him. Cody crosses his legs behind his back, keeping him inside. Leo feels him come, tighten around him. Everything’s so perfect it makes him want to cry. The scratchy ground doesn’t matter, not even the dampness of the air around the river. It doesn’t matter that they’re crying, that he just remembered he lost his parents in the cruelest way. He comes inside him promising him he won’t let him go again. He keeps the promise, even after pleasure’s gone.

**The New Start**

“There’s still so much you don’t know,” Cody’s voice sounds so distant, and Leo doesn’t want to open his eyes, “I live with the fairies, now. You don’t know the Fairy King. He won’t be happy about this. There’ll be hell to pay. You don’t want this, Leo.”

“I only want you,” Leo says, rubbing his nose against Cody’s cheek, smiling a little when his hair tickle him.

“I come with the rest of me,” Cody sighs, holding him tighter, “You can’t ignore my nature, you can’t forget it. You’ll have to deal with it, and you don’t want it.”

“I only want you,” Leo repeat, his voice unshakeable. 

“You say you want me,” Cody smiles sadly, kissing him on his temple, “But you don’t know me at all. You know who I was, not who I am. The person I am now, that person you don’t want.”

“I only want you,” he repeats for the third time. He disentangles himself from Cody only to stand up, offering him his hand. “Come home with me. Give me a chance to prove it. Let me wash you, dress you and feed you. You’ve given me so much more than you think, Cody. By giving me back my memories, you gave me back my strength. I’m strong enough to face the consequence of this – the consequence of us. I was back then, and I am now. You didn’t give me a chance to show you when we were younger – give me that chance now.”

Cody looks at him, his eyes shining with tears. The sun is high, now, and everything’s alight, from his skin to his hair to the water of the river to the green dome of the woods. His house is hidden somewhere inside it, Leo can’t see it but he knows it’s there. The thought is comforting. Having a place to go back to. A goal to run towards.

Hesitantly, Cody takes his hands, and lets him help him get up from the ground.

They start walking together, leaving traces on the dirt behind them. Soon enough, they’re all that’s left of them.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Calmest Part Of The River](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6119419) by [lisachan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan)




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